Category: Linux

I honestly don’t know why, but I have always feared the day that I would dive head first into Amazon Web Services. In the last two weeks, I have been researching the in’s and out’s of AWS, how people are using it to deploy applications, security, it’s architecture and reading AWS terminology… It is very overwhelming, but I think it’s time I embarked on this adventure.

A few inspirations, Earmilk.com’s Blake Shoji. Although I have never met IRL, nor interacted with him online; the Earmilk network boggles my mind. They definitely sparked my curiosity! If your a music lover, I’d recommend checking them out!

While I was reading up on AWS, I happen to find David Jensen’s blog post on how to install WordPress on Amazon AWS EC2. I am going to use this documentation as a basis for my study, although I do want to branch off to NGINX. We’ll see where the path takes me!

If you need further inspiration that will help motivate you to jump into the cloud, I highly recommend watching “The Known Universe” with The XX Intro Extended dubbed over it. Seriously, the possibilities are endless!

If you’re a fan of The Unlockr and happen to pick up the AT&T Galaxy S2 (SGH-i777)… You may have flipped upside down and started dragging your head on the keyboard in frustration after you realized your wifi is completely broken! I have the solution.

Fluff: After digging around the XDA and Android Device Forums I found that factory AT&T Galaxy S2 typically came with 2.3.4, most write-ups online is for 2.3.4. Samsung’s recent OTW release 2.3.6, left thousands of Superusers with wifi connectivity issues due to having the wrong kernel.

How To Fix AT&T Galaxy S2 Wifi Issue Under 2.3.6

1.) Calm the fuck down, sip your coffee, breath.
2.) Goto: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1289460
3.) Download the latest Attached File (as of 2/12/2012 it is DD_02072012.zip note the retarded naming convention is a time stamp for DD_[02/07/2012].zip – I thought the top attached file was the latest)
4.) Connect Galaxy S2 to your PC/Mac, enter USB Storage Mode, place the .zip file onto your device (just put it in the root).
5.) Power off device and enter ClockworkMod Recovery Mode (By holding down the volume down, volume up button, and the power button. Let go of the power button once the device turns on and continue to hold the volume buttons until the recovery screen loads.)
6.) Use vol up / down to highlight “install zip from sd” then use the home button to select (maybe different on other devices)
7.) Select the .zip file, install, reboot device.

When the OS loads you should be able to go to Settings -> Wifi and see all your hotspots. Connect and test.

Note: Please let me know if this does not work for you in the comments. I can further assist / update for others. Thanks!

UPDATE AS OF 6/26/2012: As of June 26, 2012 Samsung has released the OEM Ice Cream Sandwich. Previously, I decided to try out the leaked version that surfaced on the XDA forums. I am currently working on trying out the Samsung official release of ICS. I advise precaution, PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK.

UPDATE AS OF 12/1/2013: My AT&T Samsung Galaxy S2 has died as of 11/29/2013… The power button seems to have failed, causing to randomly turn on and off or stick (making it so I cannot wake / lock the screen.) I am very distraught! 🙁 If you by chance found this post, I hope this works for your phone. If you run into issues I can do my best to help. But if you run into an issue and figure out a way around it feel free to leave feedback for future reference. Ironically, I was able to pick up a free Samsung Galaxy S4 on Black Friday. Time to void the warranty! RIP S2, if I find another one on CL cheap I’ll turn it into a dedicated car mp3 player. 🙂

In 2012 I have picked up a few great books to read revolving around OOP and bettering myself as a developer. I have also ditched the iPhone and declined Steve Job’s second round of kool-aid in favor of a new mobile device; the Samsung Galaxy S II.

I have begun setting up my Netbeans environment to work with the Android SDK, special thanks to BinaryWasteland. This year I will definitely jump in with the Hello World and pick up a Java book to thumb through.

This week I had a SSD tank and I was forced to install a fresh OS. While setting up my workstation, I decided to test VM VirtualBox > VMWare. While I was setting up my VM, I couldn’t grab wget http://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/<latest>.tar.gz

I wasn’t sure what was going on so I pinged kernel.org, no packets returned. I was completely unaware that kernel.org DNS’s got hacked. Linus released Linux 3.1 on Github and I needed to get git up fast.

Installing Git On CentOS 5.5

Quickly, I checked the Webtatic repo for git. Add the repo with this line:

Installing Gitolite For Private Repo

Below is the quick install guide for gitolite – for all you that want a private repo. I’m currently installing this on a VM just to test it out. Eventually I will move my repo into a datacenter. For now, I just want a private repo so I can seamlessly push / pull between my desktop and laptop while having redundant backups of my projects.

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If you’re comfortable with Unix and ssh, the following steps should work. (However, gitolite has lots and lots of useful features; don’t miss out on them by skipping the excellent documentation!)

You’re done. Now run git clone git@server:gitolite-admin on your workstation and add users and repos.

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Head over to https://github.com/sitaramc/gitolite if your looking for further documentation on gitolit. I’m assuming this will be the best for a private git repo. I will update this post with more information once I have my workstation / laptop setup. Come to think of it, I bet I could write a great post about developing between work, home, and mobile.

Today I’ve received the OCZSSD2-2VTXE60G Solid State Drive. I’ve purchase this SSD to install on my ASUS UL80j. My intent is to improve cold start times, wake up and overall power consumption. I would also like to potentially experiment with Google Chrome OS. For now my main OS of choice will be uBuntu 11.04, although I do have a Hackintosh install CD derping around.

In this article, we will work on setting up a LAMP environment for uBuntu 11.04. As an added bonus, I will setup WordPress 3.2 in the environment for you nerds. As you may notice in previous posts, I have a nice little lappy which allows me to dev on the run.

Installing LAMP onto uBuntu 11.04

First thing is first, we need to install tasksel then run it via terminal.

[code lang=”bash”]
sudo apt-get install tasksel
sudo tasksel[/code]

Select LAMP Server and proceed to install it!

While you are installing LAMP, you will be prompted to set a password for MySQL root.

First of all, /var/www/ directory is set for root user only. We want to allow our IDE’s, such as Netbeans or Vi/Vim/Nano have permissions to write to this directory. So let’s sudo su and chown /var/www/

Arriving at Bellingham Technical College a bit late, tired from late night geeking out on uBuntu. I arrive in a moist parking lot with a grungy overcast. I walk into “Build a Free As In Freedom Cloud” in Haskell 203 late. Old Spice should sponsor Linuxfest, the man next to me smelt of musk; as if he wrestled a bear into submission.

At 11am, Mark Hinkle took the stage discussing “Crash Course on Open Source Cloud Computing” – this man is a genius. Below is his slideshare.

During lunch, of course I opted for the ribs. I met an instructor at WWU and one of the computer science network admins (their names escape me.) It was interesting talking to them about distributed storage.

After lunch I sat in to listen to Adrian Pike’s Agile development concepts and practices for lean startups talk. It was interesting to hear his experience with project management and collaborating with people online. I think the most insightful bit of information was just how their team handles communication. He mentioned Kanban, Scrum, Basecamp, Test suites, etc.

Coincidentally the Amazon AWS talk was canceled. I am not sure why but I ran into two Amazon network technicals hanging out in the hall ways. I had to sit in on a Drupal talk which was semi informative.

The next thing that happened to me was sitting down next to an asian that had a Google Laptop CR-48. I later found out he actually works for Google and was sent to LinuxfestNW to sit in on the Cloud Networking talks. I’m assuming he’s an engineer. He was sitting with one of the Amazon network technicians. David Nalley talk about open source clouds was very informative and I’d love to experiment with the software he mentioned.

All in all, Linuxfest Northwest was just another nerdcore fest. It’s nice to meet / talk with others that understand the techno jargon.

Running uBuntu 11.03 on ASUS UL80j

The ASUS UL80j is a light weight, ultra thin laptop that features Windows 7 Home Premium. It comes with an Intel i3 dual core 1.2ghz processor and 4GB of DDR3. Loading uBuntu 11.04 onto it was easy as cake. The laptop comes with a 500GB hard disk, I’ve split the partition 50-50.

Last week I began tinkering around with uBuntu 11.04 Beta before the official release, and I might say, this is the best release ever! I understand that veteran uBuntu users dislike the Unity interface, but I’ve grown to love it. Although I wish the task bar would be at the bottom. It is rather limiting being on the left hand side of the screen.

Issues At First

Unity GUI Does Not Work

Wifi LED Does Not Turn Off / On

Suspend / Hibernate Hangs

Runs Hot & Battery Doesn’t Last As Long As Win7

Getting Unity To Work

In order to get Unity to work properly I had to uninstall the Nvidia drivers. Once they were uninstalled, I restarted the system and Unity was up and running.

UPDATE: I’ve been digging around the uBuntu forums and found that the NVidia Optimus graphics card is not supported on uBuntu. There is a thread of customers complaining about the lack of support. If you stumbled upon this post and feel the need to raise your concerns, please visit Linux and Hybrid Graphics no Optimus support thread.

Fixing Wifi LED

If your blue Wifi LED light near your mouse pad isn’t working when you hit Fn + F2, here’s a quick fix. You will have to create two files and paste the following scripts.

Fixing Suspend / Hibernation

My number one complaint wants Suspend / Hibernate. In order to resolve the Suspend / Hibernate issue, will have to create a file in /etc/pm/speed.d/. Note: For some reason, hibernate still doesn’t behave like I wish it would.

Issues That Arise

Now that Suspend works fine, I’ve noticed if I keep my laptop on suspend for long periods of time the GUI won’t load upon wake up. The only work around I’ve figured out is to hit Ctrl + Alt + F1, login, and shutdown.Update: Another alternative to restarting the laptop is to restart gdm. Look below.

[code lang=”bash”]sudo shutdown -r now[/code]

If upon waking up and the GUI does not load hit Ctrl + Alt + F1. Type the following:

[code lang=”bash”]sudo /etc/init.d/gdm restart[/code]

Conclusion

With these simple fixes, I’m able to live with running uBuntu 11.04 on my ASUS UL80j. I have not been able to figure out a way to make the processor from running as hot as it does. I am thinking because the UL80j has two GPU’s (Intel & Nvidia Optimus), uBuntu automatically runs the Nvidia card instead of conserving power with the built in gpu. Another announce is the GUI not loading after the laptop has been in Suspend mode for over 24 hours.